11th January 1964

Britain’s biggest teen magazine launches in Dundee

Dundee-based DC Thomson launched Jackie, which went on to become the UK’s best-selling teen magazine, with weekly sales in excess of half a million. Despite being aimed at a primarily female audience, the first editor was a man.

The first female editor was St Andrews-born Nina Myskow. In 2013, when discussing the magazine’s success with The Herald, she noted that it had appeared at a time when the in-between age, between childhood and adulthood, was first being acknowledged as distinct in its own right.

“Jackie was part of that recognition that this was an entire group of young people who were not children and who weren’t adults, but who wanted to have their own thing,” she said.

Compelling content

As well as entertaining its readers, Jackie helped them to navigate the world in which they found themselves, in a way that was particularly relevant to their own position. Its problem pages, overseen by ‘Cathy and Claire’, were particularly popular.

However, writing in Saga, former Jackie fashion editor Wendy Rigg revealed that “Thousands of readers wrote to the magazine each week, most of all to its legendary problem page, Cathy and Claire. I’m sorry to disillusion you, but neither Cathy nor Claire existed: replies were written by members of staff.”

Every letter received an answer, even if it didn’t make it into the magazine.

End of an era

Jackie published its final issue, of more than 1500, in July 1993, but the name lived on. In 2014, a musical inspired by the magazine – naturally called Jackie: The Musical – took to the Dundee stage to coincide with the the 50th anniversary of the magazine’s launch.

The storyline revolved around a woman in middle age who stumbles across a box of issues she’d hung on to and, at a time of crisis, she finds comfort and help in the pages.